Social Media

99 Favorite Social Media Quotes and Tips

Here are 99 of my favorite social media quotes. Yes, it is a long post, but it is a fast read, and I am sure you will love every quote! I would like for us to grow this list together. Please post any other social media quotes that you absolutely love and want to share with others in the comments below. BTW, these are in no particular order. Enjoy!

1. “How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?” – Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog2. “Networking is not about hunting. It is about farming. It’s about cultivating relationships. Don’t engage in ‘premature solicitation’. You’ll be a better networker if you remember that.” – Dr. Ivan Misner, NY bestselling author & founder of BNI3. “The only way to put out a social-media fire is with social-media water.” – Ramon DeLeon, managing partner of six Domino’s stores in Chicago4. “Social Media is about sociology and psychology more than technology.” – Brain Solis Principal of FutureWorks5. “Think like a publisher, not a marketer.” – David Meerman Scott, DavidMeermanScott.com6. “At Twitter, mobile is in our DNA … For us, it’s all about mobile, and it always has been.” – Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter7. “Social media isn’t the end-all-be-all, but it offers marketers unparalleled opportunity to participate in relevant ways. It also provides a launchpad for other marketing tactics. Social media is not an island. It’s a high-power engine on the larger marketing ship.” – Matt Dickman, technomarketer.typepad.com8. “Privacy is dead, and social media hold the smoking gun.” – Pete Cashmore, Mashable CEO9. “You will make mistakes. If you are sincere about helping the community, the authenticity will show and your mistakes will be forgiven.” – Zia Yusuf, executive vice president for SAP’s global ecosystem and partner group10. “There’s no need to re-create everything from scratch … Look at some of the early adopters, see what they’ve done and see if it makes sense for your organization. And then think about what you need to do to customize it.” – Dave Fletcher, Utah chief technology officer11. “Whether something brings them joy or pain, when people share and engage in communities, they form bonds and relationships with others who acknowledge their situation.” – Liana Evans, from post on Search Engine Watch12. “Social networks aren’t about Web sites. They’re about experiences.” – Mike DiLorenzo, NHL social media marketing director13. “What used to be cigarette breaks could turn into ‘social media breaks’ as long as there is a clear signal and IT isn’t looking.” – David Armano14. “Businesses used to have a small suggestion box near the door that mostly housed dust bunnies and an occasional piece of gum. Rarely would someone get back to you. But people can now make a post from an iPhone or a BlackBerry while they’re sitting in your restaurant.” – Charles Nelson, President of Sprinkles Cupcakes president15. “More companies are discovering that an über-connected workplace is not just about implementing a new set of tools — it is also about embracing a cultural shift to create an open environment where employees are encouraged to share, innovate and collaborate virtually.” – Karie Willyerd & Jeanne C. Meister, HarvardBusiness.org16. “Twitter represents a collective collaboration that manifests our ability to unconsciously connect kindred voices through the experiences that move us. As such, Twitter is a human seismograph.” – Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks17. “In some ways, [Facebook] levels the playing field of friendship stratification. In the real world, you have very close friends and then there are those you just say “Hi” to when you pass them on the street.” – Jason Kaufman, research science fellow at Harvard University18. “Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.” – Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog19. “Those who ignore the party/conversation/network when they are content and decide to drop in when they need the network may not succeed. It’s pretty easy to spot those that are just joining the network purely to take – not to give. Therefore, be part of the party/conversation/network before you need anything from anyone.” – Jeremiah Owyang, Web-Strategist.com20. “The secret isn’t growing a huge fan base. We have 100,000 Facebook fans, but those fans have all come to us organically. We believe the more organic the growth, the more loyal the fans, the more likely they will be repeat customers.” – Cam Balzer, vice president of marketing at Threadless21. “Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t want plastered on a billboard with your face on it.” – Erin Bury, Sprouter community manager22. “Much like great products, great content will only find the best people to love it if it’s leveraged well.” – Shannon Paul, PEAK6 Online communications manager23. “We don’t want to create an army of spammers, and we are not trying to turn Facebook and Twitter into one giant spam network. All we are trying to do is get consumers to become marketers for us.” – Joey Caroni, co-founder of advertiser Peer224. “Social media is like a snowball rolling down the hill. It’s picking up speed. Five years from now, it’s going to be the standard.” – Jeff Antaya, chief marketing officer of Plante Moran25. ‘When there’s a buzz out in the blogosphere that your company has shipped a defective product, is closing its doors, or is under investigation, for example, a press release on the wire is no longer the fastest or most effective way to respond.” – Joel Postman, blog for Social Media Today26. “The bubble hasn’t popped yet and there’s tremendous value in social media. … But it’s wishful thinking to believe that others on the ‘me too’ bandwagon will survive.” – Peter Fader, marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School27. “Twitter is like a tragically hip New York night club. It is a cool, easy way for companies to engage customers in social media. But the experience can be loud and crowded.” – Bob Warfield, CEO of Helpstream28. “What’s required is a kind of social media sherpa, who can find you the audience you seek, who can reach to them on the platforms where they are already congregating, and who can help promote in tasteful ways that fit the sensitivities of the networks where your audiences are found.” – Chris Brogan, author of “Trust Agents”29. “As social media, or whatever you want to label it, becomes more prevalent, there will be blunders. We’re in experimental mode right now.” – Steve Hall, AdGabber founder30. “Monitor, engage, and be transparent; these have always been the keys to success in the digital space.” – Dallas Lawrence, Levick Strategic Communications31. “You need to clean out those old sources of your social-media diet that are no longer nourishing, dust the cobwebs off those old connections to keep them polished and valuable, and clean out the dirt from the corners of your social life where you haven’t ventured in months.” – Eric Fulwiler32. “Once you can understand where the conversation is, who leads, the type of voices and the best place for you to add your voice, you can then start becoming a more active participant.” – Mitch Joel, president of Twist Image33. “Hook into someone’s flow [via corporate postings of photos, videos, and other content on web streams before a new product is released].” – Bill Cava, chief technology officer for Ektron34. “It’s hard to get lice out of your head, and there’s no easy cure for shaking off campaign-based thinking, either.” – David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media at 360i35. “Mobile is no longer about what you can do on your cell phone. Mobile is all about doing more, all of the time.” – Mitch Joel, president of Twist Image36. ‘Ultimately, brands need to have a role in society. The best way to have a role in society is to understand how people are talking about things in real time.” – Jean-Philippe Maheu, chief digital officer at Ogilvy37. “Social Networking that matters is helping people archive their goals. Doing it reliably and repeatability so that over time people have an interest in helping you achieve your goals.” – Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog38. “We’re still in the process of picking ourselves up off the floor after witnessing firsthand the fact that a 16-year-old YouTuber can deliver us 3 times the traffic in a couple of days that some excellent traditional media coverage has over 5 months.” – Michael Fox, founder of Shoes of Prey39. “New marketing is about the relationships, not the medium.” – Ben Grossman, founder of BiGMarK40. “Twitter is a great place to tell the world what you’re thinking before you’ve had a chance to think about it.” – Chris Pirillo, blogger41. “Attention spans will only decrease as technology breeds laziness and the expectation of rapid solution delivery.” – James Gurd, e-commerce and marketing consultant42. “If your social strategy relies on advertising in social media, it’s probably better to hang on to your money.” – Taddy Hall, chief operating officer of Meteor Solutions43. “This is no longer a gimmick. This is how the American people want to receive their news and want to hear from us.” – Nick Schaper, new-media director for House Minority Leader John Boehner44. “Every year the Web offers up hundreds of new experimental services and ideas, and while you don’t have time to try them all, if you’re able to pinpoint the applications with the most traction, your early adopter status will come with long-term rewards.” – Jennifer Van Grove, editor & social media strategist

social media quotes

45. “Engaging in an authentic, meaningful conversation with consumers will be the key to marketing success and growth, even if that means acknowledging negative feedback; transparency is paramount.” – Ron Blake, president and CEO of Rewards Network46. “To utilize social media tools effectively and properly, you must absolutely generate spontaneous communications in direct response to what others are saying or to what is happening in that moment. Be yourself. Be conversational. Be engaged.” – Aliza Sherman, co-owner of social marketing firm Conversify47. “Quit counting fans, followers and blog subscribers like bottle caps. Think, instead, about what you’re hoping to achieve with and through the community that actually cares about what you’re doing.” – Amber Naslund, Social Media Today48. “If the Army can figure out how to do secure social networking and break down silos and encourage informal problem solving within a rigid hierarchy, surely your business can.” – Mark Drapeau, founder of Cheeky Fresh blog49. “You can be professional while also ‘keeping it real’ with your customers. By interacting with customers in a less formal way, you’ll build a strong human connection that helps build brand loyalty.” David Hauser, co-founder of Grasshopper50. “Twitter is not just a Web site and not microblogging, it is an entirely different medium … The way in which information travels on Twitter — the shape of it — is different to anything that we’ve previously known.” – Paul Lewis, Guardian reporter51. “If you think you are in control, you’re fooling yourself. As soon as you start listening, you realize you’re not in control. And letting go will yield more and better results.” – Charlene Li, author52. “I realize everyone is telling you social media is a unicorn, but maybe it’s just a horse?” – Jay Baer, social-media strategist53. “New media is … an amazing form of direct marketing in that you really get a sense of who your customer is, and you also get to know those people who may not be your customers yet but are aspirational and are hoping to be.” – Ivanka Trump, brand ambassador54. “If you’re looking for the next big thing, and you’re looking where everyone else is, you’re looking in the wrong place.” – Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks55. “Being the first is old media, while being to the point is new media. And Twitter never forgets.” – Mercedes Bunz56. “If your reputation sucks, none of it matters. People with lousy products, crummy business practices, and shady backgrounds get found out. And word spreads with frightening speed.” – Sonia Simone57. “Tweets are the gold standard of scoops. A growing number of newspapers are turning their entire mastheads over to Twitter.” – Woody Lewis, social media advisor to news organizations58. “The hardest thing for marketers is to turn over the brand experience to the community and let them define it.” – Eric Erwin, executive vice president of marketing and product development at Wilton
59. “Neither privacy nor publicity is dead, but technology will continue to make a mess of both.” – Danah Boyd, fellow at Harvard University60. “Actions speak louder than words. Businesses must act. Once the door to social consciousness is opened, bring the spirit of your company through it to affect change.” – Brian Solis, principal at FutureWorks61. “Engage rather than sell … Work as a co-creator, not a marketer.” – Tom H. C. Anderson, market researcher62. “The common reputation of Twitter is that it’s frivolous, which isn’t the case. If it’s set up right, it’s a rich environment of lots of learning and sharing of important material. It’s not just ‘what I had for breakfast.” – Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Centers’ Internet and American Life Project63. “If you’re a brand marketer looking at this as a creative way of just getting that one-time transaction done, you’re not recognizing the power of social media and how consumers are playing in the marketing space.” – Chris Perry, executive vice president for digital strategy at Weber Shandwick64. “Don’t fix the marketing first, fix your product. Once you’ve got a good product to talk about, the marketing’s going to flow from that.” – Scott Monty, Ford social-media chief65. “As a general principle, the more users share about themselves, the more others in the community will learn about them and identify with them.” – Matt Rhodes, writing in Social Media Today66. “The most successful marketer becomes part of the lives of their followers. They follow back. They wish happy birthday. They handle problems their customers have with products or service. They grow their businesses and brands by involving themselves in their own communities.” – Marsha Collier, speaker and business author67. “Chances are your company’s white paper won’t go viral. But sharing knowledge you’ve gathered through your trade can go a long way toward boosting your brand.” – April Joyner, business reporter68. “Marketing in a social media world means you are trying to have your message spread while competing with a billion other channels for attention. At any given time, you don’t know where your potential customers are or what they might see.” – Jeremy Epstein, founder and chief marketing navigator at Never Stop Marketing69. “The polling of Internet users shows that friends’ recommendations are the most reliable driver behind purchasing decisions. Right now that market is largely untapped. Facebook and other social networks can allow that to happen.” – Yuri Milner, Russian social-media investor70. “It’s natural online to go to the place where people are already consuming media. It’s less effort to ask people to leave an environment they’re already in.” – Cheryl Calverley, U.K.’s senior global manager for Axe Skin71. “A marketing person should always ask one key question when beginning to develop a social media strategy: how much chaos can this organization handle?” – Gary Stein, vice president of strategy for Ammo Marketing72. “Today people don’t trust companies. One of the things marketers want to do is to humanize their brand. What better way to do it than put a live person in front of them?” – Jackie Huba, author73. “Social media can be an enabler and an accelerator of existing core capabilities, values, attributes and plans. It can even be a catalyst for change. But it can’t magically create what doesn’t exist.” – Denise Zimmerman, president of NetPlus Marketing74. “The value of being connected and transparent is so high that the roadbumps of privacy issues are much lower in actual experience than people’s fears.” – Reid Hoffman, founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn75. “In the end, the winner is content. Good content, sharable content, and consumer-driven content will allow us all to have a broader spectrum of information and, for the marketer, an easier way to connect with their base.” – Aaron Kahlow, chairman and founder of the Online Marketing Summit76. “It has never been easier to be as influential as you can be today. Information is cheap. Information is easier to produce. And if you have a quality message, it’s never been cheaper to get out.” – Jordan Raynor, Republican Web strategist, as quoted at RealClearPolitics77. “There’s a reason there’s only one Times Square and only one Las Vegas. We don’t want to be swimming in ads.” – David Spark, Socialmedia.biz78. “Innovation needs to be part of your culture. Consumers are transforming faster than we are, and if we don’t catch up, we’re in trouble.” – Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus79. “Everything is happening faster on the Internet, so advertisers have to be able to respond quickly. If there is a pop-culture topic, a celebrity, event, some amazing viral video, a news story — how do advertisers get close to that so they can take advantage of traffic jumps?” – Jason Hirschhorn, chief product officer for MySpace80. “People align with movements they can believe in, and it is the human, intellectual, and financial investment in genuine content that defines experiences.”– Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks81. “Search is about figuring out what people are looking for when they enter keywords into their favorite search engine. Social media is what people are actually saying to each other; they’re telling us what they’re looking for. We, as marketers, should be able to fit it all together pretty nicely.” – Norm Elrod82. “We look at the Web as being our basic power plant, kind of like electricity, so the Web and communicating in this fashion is second nature to us now. It’s not like we go brochure, television, mail. It’s Web, and then everything else. It’s social media first, and everything else.” – Ted Leonsis, owner of the Washington Capitals83. “The minute news hits the wires, it becomes a conversation. It’s just a question of how high [the] volume [of] that conversation will become.” – Doug Frisbie, Toyota Motor Sales USA’s national social-media manager84. “You as a brand have to be completely confident about your position, because you will get criticism. You will have a negative reaction. If you didn’t get a negative reaction, that means you’re standing neutral and you have no point of view. Who wants to participate in that?” – Frank Cooper, Pepsico85. “Strategy is not focused on ROI, but on winning.” – Shannon Paul, writing in Very Official Blog86. “Ask yourself this question CONSTANTLY: where can I add the most value to what matters most to me and the people who care about me?” – Chris Brogan, author of “Trust Agents”87. “If there’s a firestorm erupting via blogs, your customers will expect you to respond via those same blogs, not via a carefully-worded press release 4 days later.” – Mack Collier, social-media consultant88. “Advocacy is the newest kid on the marketing block. While we’ve always known that people make decisions based on advice from their peers, we’ve never been able to bake that into a plan the way we have now.” – Gary Stein, vice president of strategy for Ammo Marketing89. “Backchannel griping may be part of social-media culture, but it doesn’t have to overshadow your joys and successes. And if you’ve survived bad press, you can survive a few hours of bad social media.” – Alexandra Samuel, writing in Harvard Business Review Online’s The Conversation Blog90. “The difference between PR and social media is that PR is about positioning, and social media is about becoming, being and improving.” – Chris Brogan, author of “Trust Agents”91. “Social media offers new opportunities to activate Brand Enthusiasm.” – Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central92. “If content is king, then conversion is queen.” – John Munsell, CEO of Bizzuka93. “Without a specific reason for the consumer to behave, without a reward or benefit, the overwhelmed consumer will refuse.” – Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog94. “Social Media is about the people! Not about your business. Provide for the people and the people will provide for you.” – Matt Goulart95. “Why are we trying to measure social media like a traditional channel anyway? Social media touches every facet of business and is more an extension of good business ethics.” – Erik Qualman, author of “Socialnomics”96. “You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in social media…The old paradigm was pay to play. Now you get back what you authentically put in. You’ve got to be willing to play to play.” – Alex Bogusky, co-chairman CP&B97. “Our head of social media is the customer.” – McDonald’s98. “Don’t worry; skills are cheap, passion is priceless. If you’re passionate about your content and you know it and do it better than anyone else, even with few formal business skills you have the potential to create a million-dollar business.” – Gary Vee, Author of Crush It99. “Social media is just a buzzword until you come up with a plan.” – Unknown

Don’t forget to add to the list in the comments below. I can’t wait to read what favorite social media quotes you share!